Newspapers put postal service to the test

SANDUSKY — The COVID-19 pandemic caused employee shortages in the U.S. Postal Service, which led to widespread delays, particularly during the holiday season. To test the postal service's delivery times, five Ohio Ogden Newspapers publications — the Sandusky Register, Norwalk Reflector, Findlay Courier, Tiffin Advertiser-Tribune and the Fostoria Review Times — partnered to conduct an experiment. The plan: Mail each other newspaper a letter once per week, over the course of six weeks, to determine how long each letter would take to arrive. Over those six weeks, letters were sent on a different day of the week, each week, Monday through Saturday. The experiment started Tuesday, Feb. 16, and ended Monday, March 29. The results Naddia Dhalai, a spokeswoman for the postal service in northern Ohio, said regional post offices have returned to normal levels of operation in their mail delivery. Data gathered by the Ogden newspapers shows that while there were a few noticeable outliers, most letters got delivered two to four days after they were sent. That falls in line with USPS standards on envelopes sent through first-class mail, which takes between one to three business days. One finding was that longer mileage from sender to recipient didn't necessarily mean a longer delivery time. For example, it took about four days, on average, to send a letter from Sandusky to Tiffin, about 37 miles apart. Meanwhile, it only took about two-and-a-half days, on average, to send a letter from Sandusky to Findlay, which is nearly twice as far, at about 63 miles. Most newspapers received letters in about two or three days. In Tiffin, the Advertiser-Tribune took about four days, on average, to get its letters. Participants in the experiment gathered all of the letters' delivery times and took averages of how long it took to mail from one city to another. Average send time from each city, in days (How long it took from A to get to B) • Sandusky overall: 3.03 - Sandusky to Norwalk (about 17 miles): 2.5 - Sandusky to Tiffin (about 37 miles): 4 - Sandusky to Findlay (about 63 miles): 2.3 - Sandusky to Fostoria (about 47 miles) 3.3 • Norwalk overall: 3.10 - Norwalk to Sandusky (about 17 miles): 2.5 - Norwalk to Tiffin (about 34 miles): 4 - Norwalk to Findlay (about 64 miles): 2.2 - Norwalk to Fostoria (about 47 miles): 3.7 • Findlay overall: 3.58 - Findlay to Sandusky (about 63 miles): 3.2 - Findlay to Norwalk (about 64 miles): 3.3 - Findlay to Tiffin (about 28 miles): 4.6 - Findlay to Fostoria (about 17 miles): 3.2 • Tiffin overall: 2.88 - Tiffin to Sandusky (about 37 miles): 3 - Tiffin to Norwalk (about 34 miles): 2.3 - Tiffin to Findlay (about 28 miles): 3 - Tiffin to Fostoria (about 15 miles): 3.2 • Fostoria overall: 2.88 - Fostoria to Sandusky (about 47 miles): 2.5 - Fostoria to Norwalk (about 47 miles): 2.8 - Fostoria to Tiffin (about 15 miles): 4 - Fostoria to Findlay (about 17 miles): 2.2 Average receipt time for each city, in days (Each location's average receipt time for the 24 letters they received) • Sandusky: 2.79 • Norwalk: 2.75 • Tiffin: 4.13 • Findlay: 2.42 • Fostoria: 3.33 Send and receipt time difference, in days •Sandusky: 0.24 days longer to send •Norwalk: 0.35 days longer to send •Tiffin: 1.25 days longer to receive •Findlay: 1.16 days longer to send •Fostoria: 0.45 days longer to receive Outliers and other items of note • Longest mailing time: A letter sent Tuesday, Feb. 16, from Tiffin to Norwalk took nine days to arrive. • The shortest amount of time it took to receive a sent letter was two days. Many letters were received in two days' time. • Lost letter: A letter from a Findlay residence, intended for Tiffin, never arrived at its destination. The letter was found in a yard adjacent to the Findlay residence a day after it was supposed to be sent. It's not clear what happened. *Sundays were not excluded from determining the days it took for a letter to send. Editor's note: Sara Arthurs, Joe Centers, Scott Cottos, Nicole Walby and Ron Waite contributed to this project.